


Best Left Unsaid

by dev_chieftain



Category: Dragon Age 2
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied Incest, implied off-screen non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:52:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dev_chieftain/pseuds/dev_chieftain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt on the DA Kink meme:</p><p>Carver notices that, while Garrett has always been the apple of their Mother's eye, Garrett doesn't seem to appreciate much. And sometimes Leandra even slips up and calls him Malcolm and sure, they're both mages and Garrett is the spitting image of his father when she first met him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> While I in no way consider this canon, I could see a Leandra who did something like this in her grief, and a Hawke who was scared of disappointing her going along with it. Angst galore. Not explicit at all, intentionally. Incest makes me very uncomfortable and I do not (can not) portray it in a positive light-- if you are seeking that, then I'm probably not capable of delivering.

It's all starting to make sense now.

He feels sick inside, but he's not sure for whom. Maybe it's just the lyrium craving. Maybe it's not. Maybe Uncle Gamlen's haggard face will haunt him forever, but this is much worse.

Carver hasn't seen his brother in years, but-- well, he's beginning to think he's fared the better of the two of them. All this time he'd been jealous, angry of how much unadulterated affection their mother had showered on one of them more than the others. Bethany-- bless her heart-- Bethany had never really minded.

Now Carver is beginning to think maybe she had the right of it.

"...Garrett," he says awkwardly, still standing in the doorway, remembering a hundred warning signs that he had never really acknowledged with guilt gnawing through his gut. _You can't tell mother,_ Garrett had whispered, the one time he'd found his brother with that strange fellow, Anders. _You mustn't tell her, she'll be very upset._

That was, if Carver recalls, one of the last things they said to each other. He wonders what she'd done; he remembers telling her anyway in a fit of bitterness while Garrett was trapped beneath the earth and, little did he know it, very nearly being murdered by the people he'd gone on that bloody expedition with. He remembers the way mother scowled when she heard, remembers a savage joy he'd felt at the idea of her disapproving of Garrett's dalliances. He remembers writing to Garrett but never getting a letter back.

He'd let himself be bitter over that, thought to himself _guess we know his feelings now_.

But what had Leandra done, when she'd found out? If it had been anything more than a hurried kiss, Garrett is still _not_ with the strange mage now. In fact, his estate in the city has a dreary, empty, almost haunted feeling to it, and not just because Leandra Hawke is no longer here.

"Carver," Garrett answers at length, schooling his expression from surprise bordering on shock into a more neutral, almost friendly smile. There is a deep sadness seared into him, but something else, too, a sort of-- mad?-- terrified giddiness. As if he had been locked in a dark place, for a very long time, and is now looking into the light of day and laughing because if he doesn't laugh, he'll fall to pieces. "It's good to see you."

Garrett is reluctant to touch him, reluctant to shake his hand. They go into the main room, sitting down in two soft chairs by the fireplace while Garrett's serving-girl brings them both cups of tea. Carver watches the strange little elf with open curiosity; there's a story there, surely, but he daren't ask.

"What brings you to my humble abode?" his brother asks, after some time has passed and they have said nothing, not looking at each other. They each stare intently into the fire, and Carver feels a knot in his stomach. It's only getting worse, the longer he sits there.

He has learned a few things, being in the templars. One of them is to choose his words very carefully. "I just wanted to make sure you were all right." He glances over, but his brother is still intent in the fire. "Uncle Gamlen told me what happened, and I just wanted to..."

Helplessly, he searches for the right words. Garrett does not look at him him, sitting in steely silence, one hand plucking at the threads of his chair's armrest. The other hangs limply, as if it would be too much effort to focus his attention on more than that one idle hand.

Carver tries to change tack. "You're holding up, though," he blusters. "You seem--"

"Please," Garrett's voice sounds so much older, and rich with pain and anger that perhaps he ought to be dealing with, instead of nursing, here. "I don't want to talk about that."

"I'm sorry for telling mother about-- about Anders," Carver blurts out before he's really had time to think about it. Something about Garrett's demeanor, his tone of voice, just feels so much like their father that it makes Carver _distinctly uncomfortable_. It's true that, of the three of them, Garrett had always looked the most like their father.

Not a good truth. Not one he wants to think about too hard. "I know," is all Garrett says, and then he starts laughing in an awful, quiet way, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. It goes on for a while, Carver frozen in uneasy silence, watching his brother laugh, watching Garrett's shoulders shake.

The thing about Garrett is, he never quite loses control. Even at the bottom of a well as little boys, struggling to keep their heads above the water while Carver shouted to Bethany to go get help, Garrett had never completely lost hope. Six hours they'd been down there; worst six hours of Carver's life, until the Blight. Garrett had been so damned supportive and understanding and unaffected.

Now he's the same, as soon as the laughter dies away and Garrett remembers that Carver is his guest, not just family, anymore. He rises from his chair suddenly, and Carver quietly follows.

"My apologies," Garrett says, in that smooth, warm voice that has made him so popular among the nobles, so desired among the politicians. It is that same voice that has made Meredith finally stop questioning whether Carver's brother can be trusted not to turn to bloodmagic.

It gives Carver chills. This is a voice Garrett never used around him.

"We can go into the library while Orana prepares some food, if you'd like. The view may not be quite as impressive, but there's more to do than scowl at a fire."

"I--" Suddenly, Carver isn't certain if he wants to stay for any length of time. He fleetingly wonders what's to be done about Mother's room. And what will happen to his brother if he leaves? He doesn't like to think of a world where the pressure finally makes the bastard crack. He doesn't have to like his brother to want sanity for him. "All right."

The library, Carver discovers, is where Garrett has taken to hiding his rather vast and impressive collection of spirits. They begin drinking innocently enough, and Garrett tells him about the books acquired, the statue (and that no one seems to like it), about the various types of liqueur he has been gifted, has borrowed and decided not to return, and has outright stolen. The stories get more fanciful and, despite themselves, they both loosen up; Carver finds himself smiling, finds that Garrett is grinning back.

They play-fight, the same old struggles that raised them wreaking havoc on Garrett's too-perfectly arranged library. They knock over several shelves' worth of Isabela's naughty books (safely stored in the Hawke estate for posterity, of course), most of the books that his brother evidently used to teach Fenris his letters, and a couple of small pewter figurines of mabari, which land most petulantly on their backs and leave marks.

Carver's surprised to discover he's stronger than his brother (somehow it had always seemed the reverse) when he pins Garrett to the floor in a headlock. Eventually, his brother surrenders and they slump where they are, breathlessly laughing until Carver can pick himself up.

He offers Garrett a hand to help regain his balance, but he can see the moment's already fled; his brother's eyes are sad again, his thoughts elsewhere. "Carver," Garrett slurs softly, far drunker than Carver'd have thought him capable. He realizes, with a slight pang of regret, that Garrett had probably been drinking before he'd arrived and done his best to conceal it. "Can I-- Can I tell you something?"

There's a sort of needy feeling to Garrett, as he leans heavily against Carver's support, putting them both in a precarious position likely to result with them both fallen on the ground. Carver fights to steady their balance. "Sure. Anything." He is marking the number of steps it will take to show his brother up to his bed. He slings Garrett's arm about his shoulders, and begins to walk them toward the stairs.

"I didn't think I'd survive," Garrett whispers, hoarsely, too close for Carver's comfort, making his skin crawl at what a different creature is his brother when drunk and depressed. "That's why I did it. I thought maybe then-- maybe then."

"'It'?" It is a serious effort not to be alarmed by the words his brother is speaking. Carver forces himself to squeeze more definite information from Garrett's sodden brain. "What do you mean, 'it'?"

"Figh- fighting the Arishok," Garrett clarifies drowsily, missing the fifht stair and then the sixth, the tenth-- every time they miss a stair Carver has to stop, readjust his failing grip on his brother, and carefully get them started into a forward motion again. "I didn't-- I didn't want to do it."

"Why not?" Carver asks, with a bit more venom than he meant to. Figures the blighter would whine about how he didn't want to be so damned perfect and famous once it got down to. This is more the frustration he remembers. "Worried you'd get too popular?"

Garrett's solemn nod is a slow one. "Yes. With Templars. But I thought-- you know, I thought it was what she'd have wanted." He seems to reel a bit, buries his face in one hand. "I just...I wanted to make her happy."

"And you did," Carver answers tightly, dragging them up the last of the stairs and scowling at the portrait hung above what can only be their mother's bedroom. Or what once was. He forces Garrett to walk to the other room up here, sure that it will do them no good to enter that den of memories. "You know you did."

"It was never enough," Garrett whispers, sounding tired-- sounding like, probably, he _needs_ to tell someone this. Uncharitably, Carver wishes his brother had decided to tell someone else. Someone who didn't have to look back on his whole life and re-examine the woman who'd birthed him because of it. "I-- I didn't stop her but-- I was never--"

"Stop it," Carver shouts desperately. He _does not_ want to hear this. "Maker's breath, Garrett, the past's past, _don't_ try to drag me down with you!"

That laughter starts again, and Garrett stumbles away from him into that dark and lonely looking bedroom, tripping over a chair and falling into what appears to be a writing desk. He has, of course, completely missed the bed.

Carver knows he ought to feel something. Sorrow, shock, some kind of camraderie for his brother, but really he's just sick inside. Sick, and uneasy, so close to his mother's old room, so close to Garrett. Garrett, who always was a little too friendly with his hands, but never with women.

Who, given the choice, tried to keep his trysts secret.

"Did she--" he asks, despite himself, biting his lip. It's a little astonishing to Carver that he _cares_ so much. "Did you hurt her," he asks at last, because it's hard to acknowledge that the reverse is possible.

"No," Garrett answers, looking as though he might be confused as to where he is, in the dim half-light of his deserted bedroom, balanced against that strange desk. "No. I didn't want her to be upset. She-- she always used to get so angry, when I didn't--"

Squeezing his eyes shut, Carver waits.

It never comes. Instead, there's a shaky sigh and a heavy body slumping down into that rickety wooden chair. Garrett's voice is muffled by his hands, his elbows rest on the desk. "I knew I wasn't allowed to be with any girls, I knew, but-- I thought with Anders, it might be different. I wish you hadn't told her."

"Should've brought me with you in that damn stinking expedition, then," Carver hisses, unrepetant, unremorseful. His brother laughs, or maybe sobs, and Carver feels his hackles rising. He's going to be ill if they talk about this.

"I couldn't. Mother- mother asked me not to."

Startled, he thinks back to that moment and realizes that that is exactly what had happened. The cold rage he was nursing releases, leaving him with nothing but that pit of nausea. And maybe pity, for his brother, who is so unfixably alone.

"...I understand," he says, when the silence lingers too long. "I guess I understand, now."

"I'm sorry, Carver."

He doesn't say _I know_ , though he almost wants to. Instead, he thinks of years of teasing, strange fears Garrett had held, thinks of the uncomfortable physical familiarity he had always attributed to his brother's unique, narcissistic persona. "I'm sorry, too."


End file.
